


The Long Winter

by LoveChilde



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Author regrets nothing, Bingo, F/M, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Marriage, Past Sexual Abuse, Post Season Six, Psychological Trauma, Trauma, War, Winter, bamf Sansa, mentions of past trauma, really - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-23 00:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7460046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoveChilde/pseuds/LoveChilde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the war moves south, Sansa looks out for herself. And for Theon. In each other, they find safety. Eventually, through the long winter, they may find some kind of comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Early Freeze

**Author's Note:**

> This one just tapped me on the shoulder right after I watched the season 6 finale and insisted on being written. I apologizse for nothing, I own nothing, and frankly I treat them better than their creators.
> 
> H/C Bingo fill for the prompt Learning to be Loved

At first, it’s all war, war, war. Battles are fought, and people die. Nobody has time to think - except for Sansa, since she’s not fighting. In between managing resources for Jon’s army, making sure that people are fed and clothed and armed, that the injured are mended and the dead are given proper respect, Sansa thinks. She has a lot of thinking time, really, those first few months. 

That’s why, when the fighting shifts to the south, and the Lion and the Dragon tear each other apart, Sansa makes the first move. 

She’s the rightful Queen in the North. It’s her name the others should be calling, not Jon’s. He’s not the Stark in Winterfell. But Sansa knows how to pick her battles by now. She chooses the one that matters - and the one she can win. 

It’s also the one Jon hasn’t thought of yet, which is why she catches him by surprise. 

“You’ll have to go south eventually.” She tells him, as he looks at her in confusion. Jon looks confused a lot, she’s noticed, but he has good advisors who cover for his inexperience as a leader and commander. He has potential, but he wasn’t raised to do this. Sansa was. “Someone will need to hold the north for you, and that someone will be me.” She leaves no room for dispute, and he nods, very slightly. There was never really a question that she’d hold the north eventually. “We need to consolidate power. To keep it here, and ally ourselves with our nearest neighbours.” 

Yara’s control of the Iron Islands isn’t complete yet, but she’s well on her way there. The Targaryen dragons decimated Euron’s fleet, and Yara sailed in, victorious, right into the teeth of a rebellion. She’s wresting control of the Islands back, slowly, but “She needs our support, Jon. And if we support her, she’ll owe us. The Iron Islands aren’t a bad ally to have. And they’re a very bad enemy.” 

Jon nods again. Again, he knows she’s right. 

“You knew I’d need to marry for alliance, Jon. The southern lords are more or less destroyed. Most noble houses don’t have men left.” She reads the missives the ravens bring twice a day of the battles in the south: the Tyrells, gone; the Martells, gone; the Lannisters, down to Jaime and Tyrion Lannister, both now allied with Daenerys Targaryen against their sister. No other house had risen to power from the ashes yet. The minor houses are beneath her. Marrying Sansa to one of the Northern lords would be a waste of an alliance; they were already loyal to house Stark. “This will create a firm alliance in the North. We will have your back, and hold off the White Walkers. The winter will be long and hard, we can’t afford another war in this area unless it’s against the true enemy.”

“This is all true, Sansa.” He’s had time to think and regroup, while she talked. Unfortunate. “But him? He’s- barely a man. He’ll never give you children. The Stark line-”

“Can continue through you, if necessary.” If they’re ignoring her status as the Stark heir, they can all bloody well stop treating her as a walking vessel for future Stark babies. “He will not hurt me. Jon, of all possible choice, all possible allies, he will not hurt me.” 

He has been hurt too badly, himself. They know the same horror, have looked at the demon and found it under their beds and under their skin. Of all the men in her life, he is the only one Sansa trusts. 

“Littlefinger’s been sniffing after me again. I’d rather not have to deny him again. Eventually we’ll be forced to get rid of him, but he’s too useful for now. I won’t let him touch me.” Sansa never wants to feel the touch of a man again. Men have done nothing but hurt her, since her father died. 

But Theon Greyjoy is less than a man- and more, at the same time. She trusts him. He will not hurt her. 

“And if I ever want children...the winter will be long, and Theon’s- not strong.” Broken by what Ramsay did to him. “He may not survive. In spring, after things settle, I might be free for a new alliance.” 

She thinks about the foolish child who wanted to marry a sweet prince, to love and be loved, and feels ill.

***

At first, Theon refuses.

She asks him quietly, in private. Leaves managing the army to Davos, and travels through the snow and the restless sea to the Iron Isles. She’s willing to risk that, or she just doesn’t mind dying; it’s worth the risk, at any rate. 

Theon looks at her, wide eyed, mouth slightly open. “I can’t.”

“Why not? Has Yara promised you to someone already?”

He snorts, bitter, “There’s no one she hates that much.”

“You’re her only living brother.” She points out, her voice neutral. He completes the thought she’s too polite to say out loud.

“I’m the only one she’s allowed to live. I’m no threat to her. To anybody. Not an asset, either.”

“I offer an alliance with the North. She’d be a fool to refuse me.”

He licks his lips, as nervous as she’d ever seen him, haunted and hunted. “She won’t refuse you. But I will.”

“Why?” She expected resistance, but it’s still a disappointment of sorts. “What are your alternatives?”

He looks away, draws into himself. “You deserve better.”

“I can do no better than you.” She counters, steady.

“You know how I am, Sansa. Don’t make me say it.”

“I know exactly how you are. And that is what I want.”

She can’t see his face, but she can hear the agony in his voice. She’s humiliating him, and it hurts that she has to. She wishes it wasn’t necessary. “I can’t be a husband to you.”

“You’re all the husband I can stand to have.” It’s hard to keep her voice steady, but one of them has to stay calm. “Any other would expect of me things I am not willing to give. Any other would want my power.” There is pain in truth, like muscles she hasn’t used in too long. Honesty muscles. “You’re safe. And it would unite the North and still leave Yara to be Queen of the Iron Isles.” If the war doesn’t kill her, of course. 

“If you’re offering out of pity-”

“I don’t pity you any more than I pity myself.” She cuts him off, “I’ve no mercy left in me, Theon. But I think we understand each other, as few who are alive can.” Both victims, of politics, of flimsy alliances, of other people’s failures, of fathers, brothers, lords. Of Ramsay Snow. “It would get you off the Isles. More influence than you could have otherwise. I’ll demand no more of you than you’re willing to give.”

He’d demand no more of her than she was willing to give. Would impose none of the demands any other man would see as natural. They are both unnatural creatures now. 

In each other, there’d be safety for them both. She catches his eyes, and sees a familiar pain. They both know they’re an easy escape for each other, but neither one of them would use the other beyond the point of mutuality. It would be a pairing of equals, or as close to it as they can get. A dispossessed princess, an unmanned prince. They can do no better, and much, much worse. 

She leaves him to think about it. Spends the evening discussing strategy with Yara. In the morning, he comes to her at the chamber she was given.

“I’ll speak with my sister. I doubt she’ll refuse.”

“Ice mixed with salt lasts longer. Freezes harder. It’s the right choice.” She doesn’t reach out to touch him. It’s the safest choice for them both.

***  
Sansa has lost faith in the Seven. She never wants to set foot in a Sept again. They find a heart tree in a grove that borders the estuary of a small river, which runs salty with sea water at high tide, and as the words are spoken, before the Old Gods and the Drowned God, all Sansa can think is that someone, sometime in the past, has done this before. Someone has melded the ice and the salt to make them both stronger, less likely to melt, less likely to fall apart. 

It is a comforting thought.


	2. A Late Thaw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Together, they stand strong

They share a chamber, but not a bed. It isn’t unusual for the lord and lady to have separate chambers, though Sansa’s parents never had. Neither one of them can bear the close touch of another for long, but at the same time, they both abhor being alone in the dark, not knowing what might come. By mutual agreement, they dismiss the servants at night and attend to each other’s needs themselves, instead.

Sleep is difficult, for both of them. Sansa becomes adept at soothing away Theon’s terror at night, and learns that the worst nightmares are the ones where he forget what Ramsay did to him, and remembers only the way he was before. When he wakes from those, it is a struggle to calm him, to draw him back from the depth of despair. She learns to keep sharp things safely locked away, where can can’t reach them until she’s quite sure he won’t use them. 

Theon learns how to comfort without touching, when Sansa craves companionship but trembles and sobs at a touch. He learns to always let her know he’s near, never to come at her unawares, to be slow and careful when he does want to touch her. That she agrees to be alone with him, when other men make her nervous, is a point of pride rather than offense for him- most of the time, at least. He swallows down the hurt of it, when it flares up, and reminds himself that Sansa is the only one in all of Westeros who looks at him and sees a person, not a broken thing. 

They both discover that Sansa makes excellent mulled wine, and that Theon, on days when Sansa can’t tolerate even the touch of her maid standing behind her, is surprisingly skillful at braiding her hair. 

Slowly, as winter deepens, they start to thaw.

***  
Bran returns, but he is changed, grown, so far from the little brother Sansa remembered that he might as well be a different person. Sansa finds it easier to accept him as the Three Eyed Raven, and hold the knowledge in her heart, that she once had two little brothers and both are now dead, or might as well be. The sight of him turns Theon into a trembling, whimpering wreck, and after the second time that happens, Bran- the Raven- relocates to the Godswood, where the cold doesn’t seem to bother him. 

Armed with the knowledge of Jon’s true parentage, which the Raven brings with him, the war moves south in earnest. Jon and his armies set out to join the battle, as the Dragon and the Lion are still busy destroying each other over what is left of King’s Landing. Between the Targaryen forces with their dragons, the remains of House Tyrell and the Southron Lords, and what is left of the might of Dorne, Sansa feels almost sorry for Cersei Lannister even before most of the northern forces join the fight, opening another front and trapping the Lannister forces between North and South. 

Almost, but not quite. She neither laughs nor cries as the ravens fly to Winterfell, reporting death and more death. Petyr Baelish, killed by his own men over a minor slight; Cersei Lannister, killed, it is said, by a ghost or an unseen assassin moments before her own brothers, who had joined forces with Daenerys Targaryen, could do the deed; men of Winterfell, of Highgarden, of the Reach. A generation of men, dead on the battlefield. 

In the North, other than the whistle of wind and rustle of snow, it is still quiet.

***  
Three years into the winter, the White Walkers come. The Wildlings say that they have waited, sending spies south to know when the lands of men have exhausted themselves fighting each other, when all the resistance left is made of old men, boys and women. Three years into the winter, the youngest and the oldest are already dead, and the Seven Kingdoms are ravaged by war. 

The White Walkers face old men, boys and women. But the old men are wise, the boys determined, and the women are formidable and hardened by war. One of the women also has three dragons and an army of nations from the far south at her heels, and though the winter sinks vicious teeth into mounted warriors who have never seen snow before, enough of them survive the march north to put up a real fight.

Enough blood, it seems, would melt even the snows of deepest winter. After the dragons join in the fight, the land around Winterfell steams for days. And the Walkers are gone. The Three Eyed Raven says that they have suffered enough losses that they would not return that winter. Perhaps not even next winter.

Jon loses his left arm from the elbow down, in the final battle before the dragons arrive. Hundreds of men lose their lives. Theon, carrying sword and bow for the first time in years, loses several layers of fear and self-loathing, and regains a sense of his own usefulness among other men, other people, outside the castle walls. Sansa loses nothing but sleep, and friends, but gains much respect for her care of the army. She does not fight in the lines of battle like Brienne, but her war is just as bloody and just as exhausting. She keeps men alive, as best she can. Her mother would have been proud.

***  
Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen are married twice: once in the North before the Old Gods and the Northern Lords, accompanied by Wildlings, wargs and wolves, and once in the south. Sansa, as Lady of Winterfell, gives Jon away and conducts the ceremony. When the couple leave to travel south for their second wedding and coronation, Daenerys names Sansa Warden of the North, and gives her Winterfell officially. There is comfort in that. 

Sansa and Theon do not travel south for the second wedding. Sansa doesn’t think she could bear to visit the smoking ruins of King’s Landing, and anyway, there is too much to do at home, and they no longer care what people might say. People travel less in the depth of winter, so if any rumors start, they do not reach the North.

***  
In the fifth year of winter, they have visitors. Tyrion Lannister, Hand of the Queen, comes and stays for a month. He brings back bitter memories for Sansa, but he also brings news, stories, a sense of humor he has somehow not lost, and a refreshing point of view on everything. Tyrion has seen the world from the back of a dragon, and that changes a man. He is more giant than dwarf now, and he walks proud and secure. Sansa finds that she is happy for him, and is surprised at the fact that she can feel for others now. Feeling happy for herself is still hard.

Jaime Lannister visits as well. He stays for a week only, and is quiet and withdrawn, a pale shadow of the man he had been. He continues north from Winterfell, to take the Black and assume control of the Night’s Watch. Without Cersei, he has no purpose anywhere else. Sansa feels sorry for him, which is as astonishing to her as feeling happy for Tyrion had been. Perhaps she is developing a sense of pity again. Perhaps she can. 

***  
On the eighth year of winter, when days are scant hours long and food grows scarce, Theon finally broaches a subject that has been much on his mind for weeks, maybe longer. It is a thought that has taken long to float up through his insecurity, but once settled, he feel he cannot let it go, even if it means the end of safety in his friendship with Sansa. 

Their partnership is solid, now. They know each other’s moods and rhythms by heart, can predict each other and complete each other’s sentences. Even in the bleak of winter, they have their shared jokes and memories now. They are very good friends, as much as either one of them is capable of it, and they trust each other. Theon isn’t sure how far Sansa’s trust extends, but he decides to risk it anyway. 

He knows it might mean his death. He’s seen Sansa dispatch threats to her dominion over the North with cold indifference, just as he has seen her trembling afterwards, on occasion, wrecked with guilt. But he wants to do this for her, to give her this, if only she would take it from him. 

“My lady wife,” The formality, in the privacy of their bedchamber, sets the mood immediately, and she frowns in response. “I have been thinking.”

“Oh?”

He takes a deep breath and swallows against the dryness in his throat. “I- I know I cannot be a husband to you as you deserve.”

“I don’t want any more than you are.” She says, and she means it, and he loves her for meaning it but this isn’t the answer he wants.

“I can’t give you children, Sansa. But I wish you would allow me to give you pleasure. I have- hands, and a mouth.” It is the hardest things he has ever suggested to anyone. “I could- show you. That it can be good. I can make it good for you, Sansa.”

She turns away, embarrassed and confused. She is almost twenty five years old and has never known pleasure at the touch of a man. She knows the feel of Theon’s hand on her shoulder, her arm, on occasion on her face, soft and stroking, but not elsewhere. The offer is unexpected and unwelcome, but instead of snapping at him, she says only that she’d think about it. Winter has made most of her sharper and harder, but never with Theon. She tries not to see the wounded look in his eyes at her tacit refusal. 

He doesn’t offer again. The next year, on her birthday, she slides into his bed in silence, wearing only a robe for warmth. It takes months, but by the time she turns twenty seven, Theon has shown her, indeed, that there can be pleasure between a man and a woman. It’s nothing like she imagined it, but in many ways it’s better. She wishes she could do the same for him. Hates that he silently accepts that she can’t, that he can’t, and they continue to exist.

***  
Time passes. Sansa collects orphans to Winterfell from the villages, single children left from whole families who don’t survive. When the time comes, she knows, she’ll choose the most talented, smartest and kindest to be her heir and name them a Stark. 

The Three Eyed Raven disappears beyond the Wall and returns every few months. His absences grow longer, until at last he only returns about once a year. It is easy for Sansa to believe that her brother Bran is truly gone, then.

Arya never returns; there are rumors of a woman who might be Arya Stark, running around the South with an oversized wolf, leading bandits and taking down lords who grumble rebellion before the Queen and her Consort ever have to do anything about it. She never comes to the North, though; the North remains loyal. 

***  
Times passes. Children are born, and live and die without ever seeing the sun. Others are born, and live and grow and thrive, somehow. 

The winter lasts twenty one years. As friends, companions, the closest things to lovers that they can be, Sansa and Theon stand together. Winterfell makes it through the winter neither more nor less battered than any other place in the Seven Kingdoms. The walls, like their rulers, are scarred without and within, but they stand, all the same. Looking down at her domain from the highest tower of Winterfell, at the Godswood, at Theon teaching the older boys archery in the yard below, Sansa is warmed by more than just the first touch of spring sunshine. 

Survival has never felt sweeter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let it be known that I almost had Theon die at the end, but Sansa insisted on keeping him.


End file.
